I thinking of getting back into this game. Anyone know if your still able to salvage other people wreaks without punishment?

I remember I have enough for a stealth bomber and I've finished all the training for it. Scanning down people doing level 5 missions and stealing all their shit was probably my favorite part of the game.

You can still salvage people wrecks without punishment, but considering that level 5s only spawn in low-sec nowadays, you may find that those intrepid carrier pilots are not too happy about you being in their deadspace.

Oh they changed it? I remember I could find people doing level 5s in high sec, in which case they couldn't do anything unless they wanted to sacrifice their 200mil+ ship for my 3mil savager.( Once I switch over to the stealth bomber it will be a bit more but I'm sure its still not worth get your ship blown to bits by the concord)

Should i bother skilling up standard missiles to 5, for a total of 15 days... so i can fit a nice caracal...

or should i just leave standard at 3 and train heavy missiles to 5, total of 20 days, so i can fit a nice drake.

I'm thinking, stick with my caracal in an "average" fit while i skill up for the drake.

would i ever use the caracal again (other than just goofing around) once i can fit the drake?

this is, of course, assuming i can afford both ships... so, money out of the question i guess.

It depends on what roles you want to fill. Standard missile 5 is not needed if you only plan to use the ship for PVE. If you wanted to fill an anti-frigate role with a Caracal in a pvp gang, it would be helpful. Heavy missile 5 is definitely a useful skill to have, so you can use T2 launchers and missiles. If you want to focus on missile ships, definitely have that skill to 5 and heavy missile specialization to at least 4.

As far as using a Caracal once you can fly a Drake, it's a good ship to run L1s and L2s for easy standing. Once you get to L3 missions for the corp you want, the Drake would be the better choice. If you decide you want to start running missions for a new corp, you can dust off your Caracal and build up to L3s quickly, then take over with a Drake. I did that many times trying to find the best corp to mission for.

Is there like a legion fit for PLEXing or is Tengu undisputed god at this

The Tengu is the only T3 I have first hand experience with, so I can't speak as to the Legion's effectiveness at running plexes. Just looking at the Legion in EFT, it can't match the Tengu's dps even when comparing pulse lasers to heavy missiles, so I would assume that it's not the best choice to plex with. It might be able to tank a 10/10 without much problem (depending on how you fit it), but it has very low dps, so it would take much longer than a Tengu to run the site.